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An atmosphere
A short comedy by a humble semi-newbie Rated PG for some mild adult content and suggestive dialogue. Prologue Chris McLean opened his eyes after a good night's sleep. He tilted his head to the left and his gaze met Chef Hatchet's, who was already up. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," said Chef, nevertheless focused on his work. "Morning. My head hurts," moaned Chris. "It's normal after you wake up," explained Chef. "Aren't you used to it?" "I haven't been in this situation many times, to be honest," stated Chris. "Get used to it, then," Chef advised him. Chris nodded and they plunged into silence. After a while, the silence started to get embarassing. Chris asked, "Was it good for you?" "Sort of," Chef shrugged. "It was good, for my first time." "Hadn't you done that in the army?" asked Chris. "Yeah, but the ones in the army are much more sturdy. It's a completely different deal," Chef said. Chris uttered an indifferent "Oh." Another awkward silence followed. Chef broke it stating "It would have been better if you hadn't fallen asleep in the middle of it." "Oh, I knew you were going to bring up that subject," Chris snorted, annoyed. "I'm just saying-" "We were really high, okay?" Chris defended himself. "I usually get sleepy in that situation." "Oh, really?" Chef raged. "Yeah," said Chris. "And why didn't you keep on without me?" "I did!" said Chef. "It's not the same thing when you're asleep." "I was freaking sleepy, dammit!" "Well, that still doesn't explain why you told me to stop when we were halfway there." "I'm not used to that, I was frightened, okay?" said Chris. "And you didn't help at all." "How?" asked Chef, gritting his teeth. "We were almost reaching it when you did that thingy of yours and scared me!" said Chris. "It wasn't me! It's not my fault if your jet is too hasty," said Chef. "Oh, so you're saying you lost control of the situation," mocked Chris. "What are you? A monkey?" "Monkeys... don't... do... THAT!" shouted Chef. "You can't tell," said Chris. "Well, I have never seen any monkey doing it," said Chef. "THEN GET A GODDAMN LAPTOP AND GOOGLE FOR IT!" said Chris, furious. Both Chris and Chef gasped in rage. "I liked what we had better in the show," said Chris. "Me too," snorts Chef. Having those words been pronounced, they went into another uncomfortable silence. Chris stared out the window, absent-minded. He never thought his relationship with Chef would get to that point. They were good friends in the show, but that experience had been the last straw, and he felt like their fellowship had been reduced to shards. The steady, yet loud noises everywhere, his guilty conscience, and the distance from home did nothing but worsen that feeling. The Total Drama Jumbo Jet kept cutting through the stratosphere after its first long overnight flight in a long while. Chapter First Ezekiel zipped up his pants, flushed, and washed his hands a couple of times, all that while whistling Michael Jackson's hit song Billie Jean. He went to the door in a leap, and after a negligible battle against his own willpower, returned to the sink and washed his hands again. Long story short, that procedure was repeated several times and the OCD sufferer finally left the bathroom, a few seconds before a flight attendant could ask him to leave it unoccupied so other people could use it. Satisfied with his own timing, Ezekiel went back to his seat and cleaned his own hands again with a small hand sanitizer tub. It must be remarked that he had been making considerable progress on quitting that habit. His gaze drifted across the economy class's sector as he tried to find something to focus on, for he cared too much for his own hygiene to dare picking up the tourism magazine in front of him. He finally had his attention called by the lustrous red hair of a fetching lady across the aisle. Unwittingly, and much because of his long-time lack of social skills, he uttered a surprised "Jeez." A woman did look at him and smile, and Ezekiel even smiled in response, but then had his expression turned again into an emotionless poker face upon realizing that woman wasn't the astonishing beauty to whom the "Jeez" was targeted, but rather a wrinkly 80-year-old-ish madam who shared a peculiar resemblance with the Queen of England. Deep inside, Ezekiel was actually amused at the possibility of giving it a try, but the little he had learned from his sparse social experiences sufficed for him to understand that you don't openly flirt with a woman who's 50 years older than you. With that thought on his mind, Ezekiel drove his attention back to the pretty redhead, who was now focused on touching up her eye liner. For a while, the thoughts on that man's mind didn't extrapolate the boundaries of an inoffensive platonic fantasy, but then she looked at him for an instant, and something in the lady's eyes surprised him. He knew her; a single eye contact had been enough for him to realize that. But in spite of that certainty, he didn't have the most remote idea of where they had met. He struggled to remember it, but ended up giving up, contented with the fact that he had met a beautiful woman at some point in his past. Yet a spark of curiosity kept alive on his mind, and he couldn't bear forgetting about it. Anxious, he looked at the tourism magazine resting in the basket tied to the back of the seat in front of him, and even stretched his arm to pick it up. He could not, however, make it all the way through this movement, and his arm retracted again. He swallowed hard, and glanced at the redhead with the corner of his eye, desperately but quietly wishing she wasn't looking at him at that moment. He couldn't know it, but she was. Then he looked again at the magazine, and this time his eyes scanned the entire cover, from the headline to the editor's seal. It was then that a not particularly flashy heading brought his mind back to the past: "CAMP WAWANAKWA - A formerly highlighted site, now in revitalization" In an outburst, he picked up the magazine and flipped pages frantically until he finally reached that article. Though it took up not more than five pages, it was enough for Ezekiel to have sequent flashes of his time as a Total Drama Island contestant. According to the magazine, the place that had twice provided the setting for a popular reality competition was now being turned into a 5-star resort. "Now that's ironical," Ezekiel thought. "We had always been told the competition would be held in a resort, and now that it's over, they finally decide to turn it into a resort." He chuckled bitterly, and, before he could notice, that bitter chuckle had become an uncontrollable laughter—another habit he had been trying to get rid of. The eyes of the people around ultimately made him stop laughing, and he heard some people muttering things such as "Who is this guy?" But the article also helped Ezekiel figure out where he knew the readhead from. He looked at her again, and nodded. Her nose was undoubtedly different, but that was a rock bottom detail if compared to the rest of her person, which was, in Ezekiel's opinion, the same as someone he had met in the show's. After cleaning his hands again, he got up and crossed the aisle—it was done in not more than one and a half step—and then he finally found the courage to say, "Excuse me." "Yes?" the redhead generically responded. "Are you... Lindsay?" Chapter Second "Yes, I am," said Lindsay, confused by that unfamiliar face. "Do I know you?" "It's me, Ezekiel," the unfamiliar face explained. "From TDI." "Ooh," said Lindsay, confused notwithstanding. Then, while giggling in an attempt to appear sympathetic, she added "I don't remember you." "Really? Don't you?" asked Ezekiel. "Is it because you keep forgetting about people or do you just not remember me?" "Huh..." Ezekiel's rudeness took Lindsay aback. "I'm sorry, but I really don't remember you." "You used to be blond, didn't you?" asked Ezekiel, oblivious to the fact that his short stays in seasons 1 and 3 were keeping Lindsay from remembering him. "Yeah, I did," said Lindsay. "Did you watch the show?" "I was in it," said Ezekiel. "And, I don't wanna brag, but I may say I did pretty well." "Really? In which season were you?" Lindsay insisted. "The first," said Ezekiel. "Total Drama Island. I was in the Killer Bass." "Oh," said Lindsay, still confused, for she hadn't kept in mind the name of her former team. "I think I remember you." "Really?" "Yeah," said Lindsay. "You were that dork with green glasses, weren't you?" Ezekiel stared at her for a while, bearing a bare smile. "Weren't you?" "I think I wasn't," said Ezekiel as his smile resisted. Lindsay looked away, lost in thoughts, and tried to remember who the pale man in front of her was. Her fingers pattered on the armrest, and the teenage-ish boy sitting next to her killed a guy in his PSP game. "Oh, oh, I know who you are!" she suddenly said, overly excited by that little victory. "You're that sexist who picked his nose and was voted off on the first day!" Some people in the plane looked at them. In response to the redhead's remark, an uncomfortable Ezekiel claimed "Yeah, that's a way to see it." "The only way to see it," stated Lindsay. "It's been... quite a while, eh?" "Yeah," said Ezekiel, unchanged. Time had done nothing for his oblivion; in his head, he firmly believed to have been a memorable contestant, even having been an early out in both first and third seasons and not being known for anything but his sexist comments and his metamorphosis into a mad beast in Total Drama World Tour. "So, how did you end up after the show?" "Married," said Lindsay, roughly indifferent. "That's basically it." "To Tyler?" inquired Ezekiel, curious. "Who's Tyler?" asked Lindsay, with a naive smile. Ezekiel took a little long to notice his gaffe, but ultimately changed the subject querying "Is this your son?" "Oh, this?" asked Lindsay, looking at the boy next to her. "This is my husband." The husband greeted Ezekiel with a thumbs-up and quickly resumed his game. This time, Ezekiel's gaffe produced no effect in him but a muffled laugh. "Your husband?" he asked, incredulous. "Are you kidding me?" "Why would I?" the naive redhead questioned. "He's really young," Ezekiel pointed out, delicate as usual. "For a moment, I thought he was your son." "Oh, we have a son, but he went on a trip with his girlfriend's parents," explained Lindsay. "He's probably in Cabo right now." "Oh, interesting," said Ezekiel. "How old is he?" "Fifteen," said Lindsay, without noticing the absurdity of it. Ezekiel did the math and wheezed in surprise. It had been exactly fifteen years since the show had ended, and Lindsay did seem a little chubby towards the end of the competition, but Ezekiel was once again too naive to reach that conclusion. "Are you employed?" he asked, still too oblivious to notice Lindsay was the exact kind of woman for a trophy wife role. "I'm a makeup artist in a studio in Los Angeles. I used to be a model, but then I turned 28, so..." Lindsay expatiated. "Brent over there is a computer..." "Software developer," the husband spoke for the first time, without diverting his eyes from the console. "Yeah, that. I'm not good with occupation names... I'm always an early out in home games!" Lindsay laughed ludicrously and Ezekiel uttered an insincere chuckle out of his nervosism. "And you? Where did you end up?" In a rush to change the subject, Ezekiel asked "Do people recognize you in the street or something?" "They do, sometimes. A little less since I turned 30, but they still do," said Lindsay. "What about you?" "Eh..." Ezekiel was nervous again, but felt like changing the subject afresh wouldn't sound the right way. "Not that much." In fact, they did not at all. "I guess that's because I quit that bonnet. The last time someone stopped me in the street was for me to take part in a survey on midlife crisis." Lindsay laughed, and Ezekiel copied her again, though he had been entirely serious. "Okay," said Lindsay, aiming to put an end to what was becoming quite a boring conversation in her opinion. "You're... Zach, right?" "Ezekiel," said the man with that name. "Right. It was good to see you, Ezekiel." "Same," said Ezekiel. Lindsay reached out her hand and Ezekiel shaked it. They smiled at each other for a while—though Lindsay's smile was merely polite, whereas Ezekiel's was purely sincere for once in a while—and then Ezekiel asked, "So, when did you decide to dye your hair?" Lindsay stared at him, and her smile was a hair's breadth away from vanishing. Chapter Third After Lindsay was forced by social moorings to keep conversation going for a few more minutes, Ezekiel returned to his seat and cleaned his hands once again. Then he picked up the tourism magazine—by that point, he hadn't any trouble to do so—and resumed his reading. Yet he didn't manage to stay focused on that activity for more than three minutes, and his focus went back to gazing about the plane in search of interesting individuals. His gaze settled down at a familiar brunette on the other side of the plane. She seemed light-headed to Ezekiel, and she indeed was distracted with the bird's eye view of the land below the plane. Ezekiel noticed something familiar on her look, and he even pondered the possibility of knowing her from the show, but that assumption was quickly ruled out, for Ezekiel thought it improbable to find two people from the show in the same plane. Pleased to have reached that conclusion, he drifted his look to an article on the best inns in Southeastern Asia, a split second after catching a glimpse of the brunette smiling at him. Forty-eight seconds later, he was in front of the brunette's seat. "I know you, don't I?" she asked. "From TDI." "Maybe," said Ezekiel. "Who are you?" "Guess," the brunette smiled archly. "I actually have no idea," Ezekiel admitted. "You are Ezekiel, aren't you?" the woman asked. "Eh, I am, but... wait, you know my name?" The woman didn't answer; instead, she queried "Hadn't you fallen into a volcano or something?" "Please don't touch that subject," Ezekiel asked, trying not to sound harsh. "Um... okay," the woman upheld. "But where did you end up?" "That's enough me," Ezekiel said, still nervous. "Talk about yourself." "I think you're not recognizing me," said the brunette. "But I played a major role in season two, in case you don't remember." "I played a major role in season three," said Ezekiel. "That's enough you," the brunette replied sardonically. "And, no offense, but all you did in season three was becoming a zombie." "There are many ways to see it," Ezekiel affirmed. "Yeah, I don't think so," the woman said with a crooked smile. "I was an antagonist, you know." "And are you proud of it?" questioned Ezekiel. "Are you?" the woman smiled again. "I wasn't an antagonist." "You do have an everyone conflict on Total Drama Wiki," the brunette pointed out. "Yeah, there's that," said Ezekiel. "But it's just with the females, so I don't think it counts." "Well, that's your opinion." The woman shrugged. "Are you going to tell me who you are?" Ezekiel asked again. "Maybe." The brunette's charm resisted. There was something about her that resembled a person Ezekiel knew, but he thought it would be too absurd to be true. "So, since you're not going to tell me what you are, I'll do it. I am... an orthopedist." "How interesting," said Ezekiel, even though he had never been to an orthopedist and therefore didn't know what it was. "I'm a..." He quickly thought of a fancy name he had overheard a few days later. "Necrophiliac." The brunette stifled a laughter. "What?" she asked, nearly smiling. Ezekiel noticed he had said something stupid and covered it up saying, "Just kidding, just kidding." With that, he actually drew a laugh from the woman, and smiled unobtrusively. "So, an orthopedist." "In TDI days, I actually planned to be something bigger, but it didn't work out, so I had to go by that..." the brunette said, not caring to clarify what the 'something bigger' was, until she said "I wanted to be a model." Ezekiel looked at her face again. He noticed she wasn't particularly pretty, though her features were indeed symmetrical, almost as if they had been planned in a computer. The brunette continued, "But I made some decisions in my life that kept me from becoming one. So, yeah..." It was the second person Ezekiel met that day who had broken away from model career. He took note of it later. "What a coincidence," he wondered aloud. "What?" asked the woman. "You're the second person I meet this day who competed in TDI." "Really? Who's the other one?" the woman asked, curious. "Lindsay. Do you remember her?" "Why should I remember her, if she doesn't remember us?" the brunette said. She actually laughed at her own joke, though Ezekiel took a little while to get it. "Well, she can't remember you if you don't say who you are," Ezekiel insisted. "Do you really want to know who I am?" the brunette asked, smiling blandly. "Hm-hm." "Really?" "Hm-hm." The woman smiled mischievously at Ezekiel for a minute, during which Ezekiel got plunged into a profound suspense. "Are you gonna tell me or not?" Ezekiel lost it. "Okay, okay," the woman said. Another half minute of suspense went, and Ezekiel was again about to lose his mind. But then the brunette finally opened her mouth to say, bearing a smiley mien, "I am Justin." Chapter Fourth It would be difficult to depict the surprise that got hold of Ezekiel, a countryside man raised in a conservative family who had little to no contact with the outside world until his early adulthood, the moment the brunette made that disclosure. Why, in the world Ezekiel was familiar with, men would be men, women would be women and Justin... probably a man. But then, after the disclosure, "Justin", or, as he was now known, Jenna, didn't hesitate to introduce Ezekiel to the amazing world of plastic surgery—actually, surgeries in general, taking into account the circumstances of that case in particular—and it was, so to speak, a shocker. On many levels. Ezekiel was still speechless once back to his seat, and so he remained for a few minutes, without daring to say a word or make a move. Suddenly, modern world had struck him, and he was not ready for it just yet. "Excuse me, which magazine are you reading?" the man in the front row asked him, interrupting his private cataclysm. "Some tourism magazine," Ezekiel says. "Why?" "Oh, I just finished a book, and the only thing to read in my seat is some gossip magazine, so I was wondering if you could lend me yours." Ezekiel mused. He did like gossip magazines; they did help him stay tuned with the world, or so he thought; and the tourism magazine did have few interesting articles to his taste. "Y-" he started, but then he looked in the man's eyes and they shut him up. This time, there was no doubt as to who that person was. "Noah?!" Ezekiel said, astonished. "Yes?" the man asked. "I- Ezekiel- You-" "Don't introduce yourself, it's waste of time," Noah said. "So, will you lend the magazine or what?" "How high is the likelihood of meeting three people from the show in the same plane?" Ezekiel ended up asking. "You're kidding, right?" Noah asked, and he wasn't more annoyed because he thought Ezekiel couldn't be serious, given the circumstances. "No, I'm not," Ezekiel said. "I met Lindsay, and... well, Justin, and-" "So," Noah interrupted him. "Assuming that we are in a random commercial flight, the chances would be quite low, I must admit. Yet, what leads you to think that the mere fact that we, two people who barely know each other but just so happened to have been in the same season of a reality show, met in a commercial flight is worthy of being the topic of an entire conversation?" "Oh, I-" Ezekiel didn't know what to say. "You know, Ezekiel, life is a short thing. One day, you, I, Lindsay, Justin, the writer of this story, and everyone in this plane will die and, after a couple of decades, be reduced to dirt. Many milleniums in the future, if the human race is lucky enough to last until then, the Sun will explode and swallow all the planets orbiting it. We, humans, and everything we have done will cease to exist. And you know what will happen after that, Ezekiel?" "Eternal life in a divine land of peace and rest?" Ezekiel guessed. "No. The universe will move on, as if we had never been here. That simple." "Well, I was born and raised in a Christian family, and I am forced to disagree with you," Ezekiel says. "I-" "Have you taken into account that the Christianity is mostly based on the completely ambiguous concept of right and wrong and has been around for like two thousand years while the universe is fourteen billion years old?" "I-" "Besides, Ezekiel, if you do the math, you'll realize we only enjoy around one fourth of our lives, apart from which we will either be working, or sleeping, or watching commercials. So, if you want to waste the short time you have in this world on useless conversations, it's your decision. But don't expect me to be an accomplice." "I was just being polite-" "You see? That's the problem. Everyone's just being polite. Capitalism and all it implies forces us to spend most of our lives doing things we don't really take advantage from. Why would someone want to hear someone else's opinions on the weather, for example? Can you think of anything more pathetic?" "Well-" "Of course you can. Everyone can. People just get used to the myriad of absurdities that surround us in our everyday life, and they don't even notice the fact that they are absurd. Well, Ezekiel, to be honest, I don't have any interest in talking to you, or even looking at you, for the next five minutes, which I'd rather spend reading the tourism magazine you're holding." By that point, the passengers around them were paying close attention to Noah's speech. Granted, most of them didn't have real interest in the things he was saying, but you don't always get to hear a social criticism discourse in a plane. "Life is a short, short thing, and in my honest opinion it's a crime to waste five minutes of it randomly chattering about unimportant matters when you could be reading, or listening to music, or even contemplating life, the universe, and everything. Therefore, I don't think there's anything left to be said. Have a good life." He was about to turn away when Ezekiel inquired "Can I ask something?" Noah sighed, and then relutanctly assented. "What does 'myriad' mean?" Noah stared into Ezekiel's eyes, near tears/laughter, and then said "Your left hand has been on a slice of pickle for the last three minutes," before turning away. Ezekiel gave Noah the tourism magazine and sat back, with his faith shaken, his standards challenged, his mind confused by Noah's meta-reference, and his tub of hand sanitizer instantly reduced to seventeen percent of its initial content. Chapter Fifth Ezekiel gave up again. He crumpled the piece of paper he was holding, and threw it across the plane. It hit a poor man's head. For the third time. "You know, it starts hurting after some time," the man yelled to whoever kept throwing those paper balls at him. Ezekiel didn't listen to him. He really couldn't care less about that man's cranial health. All he was focused on at that moment was doing the math. He picked up his pen and proceeded to scribble a notepad again. "What are the odds?" he kept whispering to himself. He looked around again. There were 32 people aboard that plane. Somehow, 4 of them had been in TDI years back. He couldn't explain that without the convenient hand of religion, and Noah's words had really taught him to not use religion to explain everything, so he was doing the math. Ezekiel was actually terrible at math. In fact, he was so terrible at math he couldn't solve that problem even with the help of a calculator, for he wasn't sure about the proceedings he had to adopt. But he was trying nonetheless, and, so far, the odds were very, very tiny. Almost as if it was mean to happen, he thought, but, as if Noah had been so pervasive as to remain in his head even then, he shook off that thought right away. He took another look around the plane to recount the passengers, in what could be interpreted as an escape from his actual goal. But, this time, he noticed something. More precisely, he noticed several things he hadn't noticed before. He noticed a very fat woman sobbing and desperately pleasing herself with orange cupcakes. He noticed a young-looking couple arguing in front of what seemed to be their child. He noticed a 40-ish lady with her seat fully reclined (granted, this meant about 25 degrees of inclination, but it was still troubling the man behind her) listening to hard rock at full volume with an unintentionally flashy headset. He noticed a man scratching his private parts almost choreographically while quietly moaning "That's the stuff." He noticed two pretty women making out in a corner like they were in their bedroom. (The stewardess was uncomfortable but didn't dare to interrupt them, because she didn't know whether that could be considered homophobic, and she couldn't afford losing another job for being PI.) He even noticed a man pet a squirrel in a very inappropriate manner while his elderly mother condemned him with her eyes. What surprised him about all that imagery, though, was recognizing Eva, Geoff, Bridgette, Gwen, Duncan, Katie, Sadie, and DJ. He passed out instantly. When he was up again, several familiar faces were surrounding him. "What happened?" he asked in a faint tone. He would have listened to the answer, and he would have realized that the people surrounding him were all former TDI cast members, but then something else caught his attention -- a Judd Apatow comedy on the airplane TV. The esteemed reader shall understand that, as a Christian man whose devotion to his religion's dogma bordered on fanaticism, Ezekiel had never allowed himself to watch a Judd Apatow comedy, even though his few friends had recommended several. The funniest movie Ezekiel had ever watched was Airplane! because it was rated A, but even then he found it too audacious for his money. Therefore, watching but a single scene from Knocked Up had a deep effect on him. Ezekiel laughed. He laughed like he had never laughed before. He laughed out loud, helplessly, for several minutes, and the people surrounding him didn't know what to do. It wasn't even such a funny scene. But Ezekiel was used to boundaries, and crossing them was just that big a deal. The former TDI cast members exchanged glances, confused. "Um... Ezekiel?" a bald man called. Ezekiel was crying. He was nearly not breathing. No one could understand what was so funny about Seth Rogen trying not to harm a fetus with his penis, but Ezekiel just couldn't stop laughing. After a few more awkward minutes, Ezekiel finally came to his senses, likely because of some background Christian penitence. He looked around, and repeated the question he had asked before. "I think you passed out," the same bald man told him. "What happened?" "Who are you?" Ezekiel asked. "I'm Owen. Didn't recognize me?" Ezekiel didn't recognize him. Owen was a lot less chubby; he could now be described as stocky at most. "Another one? Oh," Ezekiel cried, closing his eyes and letting his head down again. "What does he mean? Is there another Owen here?" Owen asked to the people around him, to other two Owens' response. "How is that possible?" said Ezekiel. "I mean, what are the odds?" The former TDI cast members looked at each other again; they didn't know what Ezekiel meant. Noah was still in his seat, absolutely indifferent to the situation, but noticing his fellow contestants' confusion he remarked, "I think he thinks this is a random commercial flight." A lot of people frowned, in increased confusion. A woman that appeared to be Heather said, "That can't be true. He's not that dumb. Is he?" "I honestly think he is," Noah shrugged. Heather turned to Ezekiel. "Dear, are you aware of what we're doing here?" "I'm guessing you're trying to make me crazy!" Ezekiel exclaimed. "Are you from TDI too?!" "Oh, God," Heather facepalmed. "What Heather is failing to say," Noah couldn't help interfering, "is that everyone here is from TDI. Gosh, you guys take so long to say a few words..." "What?" Ezekiel said. Then he looked around again. "But- but I don't recognize anyone! I mean, except for the two of you." He pointed at DJ and LeShawna, who rolled their eyes. "Is that considered racist?" LeShawna whispered to DJ, who shrugged in response. "Take a second look," Bridgette suggested. "We're all here." Ezekiel narrowed his eyes, and tried to recognize the people around him. He finally realized it was true -- everyone was there. Some had changed a lot, some hadn't changed at all, but everyone was there. He thought about that for a few seconds, uttered a surprised "Oh," and passed out again. Category:Stories by a humble semi-newbie Category:Comedies Category:Noncompetition stories Category:Short stories